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The latest version of Mindjet's MindManager visual planning and collaboration tool features enhanced integration with Microsoft products and makes it easier to create incredibly slick and versatile maps.

The newly released MindManager Pro 6 builds upon the fresh foundation version X5 laid as it adds new features that make it even easier to run productive meetings and work with the maps you create. Also new is the MindManager Viewer that allows you to publish your maps to your intranet easily in a way that allows user to fully view and navigate the maps.

For those unfamiliar with the tool, MindManager is a visual mapping tool that is a useful tool for a variety of common business scenarios:

• Running effective meetings and capturing ideas
• Brainstorming and creative innovation
• Project management
• Creating visual representations of complex concepts and projects
• Marketing and business planning
• Training and development

You can read about earlier releases of MindManager and some of the core functionality that remains part of Version 6 in these prior articles: Mindjet Opens New Avenues to Enterprise Integration and Brainstorming and Planning with MindManager.

Until now, you could not distribute your maps via the intranet unless everyone had the full MindManager application (or a free viewer) installed on their desktop. Since we all know you can't rely on a person's desktop configuration when it comes to publishing content to your intranet, this made it difficult to share your maps far and wide.

An Active X control is now available that allows you to publish your maps and have them displayed within a browser (Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher set to medium security settings is required). The Viewer gives the user access to the complete and rich set of features of the map (navigate, expand, collapse, etc.) in a read-only fashion. About the only thing you can't do with the Viewer is create new maps.

The Viewer is perfect for any blog applications you might have on your intranet as well, since people can publish maps and quickly receive and incorporate feedback. To download the viewer, view a gallery of maps, and learn more about how to deploy your maps to the Web you can visit the Viewer section of the Mindjet Web site.

With Version 6, you can now use MindManager as your home base for projects, linking and attaching to the other tools you need. The new and improved integration with Microsoft Office Products allows you to better exploit the features of both sets of applications. In addition to hyperlinking to documents and Web sites, you can now link multiple attachments to a topic within your map. You can basically open your map and have access to all your supporting information for your project planning.

New in this release is the ability to link with Microsoft Excel, embedding data within your map. In prior versions, Excel was like the ugly stepchild as it was the only Microsoft Office product that didn't have interoperability with your maps. Embedding spreadsheets is perfect for when you need a snapshot of data for planning that is always up to date and readily available to you yet does not clutter your map (since it is collapsible). A screenshot of Excel data included in a map (expanded view) looks like:

Even cooler is the ability to create an embedded spreadsheet or chart on the fly. While you're working on your map you can quickly type in some data and create a chart that can be expanded or collapsed as you do presentations or additional planning. This comes in very handy when you base presentations on your maps using the PowerPoint export.

The integration enhancement that makes me happiest is the improved Microsoft PowerPoint Export and Presentation Mode option. The Presentation Mode option is a built in feature within MindManager that allows you to take an audience through your map in a PowerPoint-like tour. For those quick presentations where you need to capture audience feedback about your map on the fly, this is a major time saver.

For more formal presentations, you can still export the map to PowerPoint. The added benefit in this new version of the software is that you can now preview how your slides will look, reorganize the map, and instantly see how the slides will look with the changes before your export to PowerPoint. This saves time and frustration of bouncing back and forth between your presentation and your map trying to fix layout and formatting issues.

Based on my experience working with the product for several years now, I think this latest version has really spruced up the formatting capabilities. While you could always filter and sort on different map markers (icons, priorities, etc.), now you can display relationships and draw attention to the critical areas of your map much easier. I don't profess to even tap the potential of the map formatting with the work I've done, but below is a quick screenshot of some formatting done on the fly with simply a few clicks. It translates beautifully into the presentation mode as well.

What I find most interesting about the product is the number of unique ways that people use it. So often, vendor Web sites list small testimonials or just list companies that have had success with the product. I really enjoyed reading the unique and varied uses that MindJet shares on its case studies page. It seems like the use of this product is only limited by your imagination and creativity.

MindManager 6 will be available Sept. 20, 2005. It prices at $349 per seat; $229 for MindManager Basic 6. Quantity discounts are available.